i was looking for a breath of life
by i-revel-in-chaos
Summary: He knew what fear was. Or at least, he thought he knew what fear was.


_And I would need one more touch_

_Another taste of divine rush_

_And I believe, I believe it so, oh oh oh_

;

He knew what fear was.

Or at least, he _thought _he knew what fear was.

Fear was what he had felt when an old woman with crooked teeth and a lisp had told him his mother was never coming back.

Fear was what he had felt when he had been five and he had been caught stealing an apple pie.

Fear was what he had felt when his master had gotten sick of him and sent him along to serve the Night's Watch, with a bunch of criminals and scraggly men.

Fear was what he had felt when he had watched The Tickler question the prisoners and listened to their to screams.

Fear was what he had felt when he had seen girls being dragged into bushes and had prayed to every possible god that none of the men preferred their victims pre-flowered.

Fear was what he had felt when the news had come of the bloody wedding at the Twins.

He had lived with fear his whole life; he knew what fear was.

But then he had seen her broken body on the rough ground, shaking and twisting and trembling as if dodging a tremendous blow, her hand grasping the wound running from her chest and down her side, her screams and desperate whimpers echoing across the great hall and lodging themselves into his memories, her blood pooling underneath her, red and terrible and red.

And that was the moment when he finally knew what fear was.

;

He screams, screams and screams and screams until his voice is hoarse and raw and he feels his chest burn.

They force milk of the poppy down his throat.

;

He wakes, his body slow and sluggish and aching.

He screams again.

They force milk of the poppy down his throat.

;

He wakes alone, stumbles off his cot and drags himself across the chambers and out into the cold, wet night, his knees digging into the gravel and dirt and rocks on the ground.

He screams again, baring his teeth at the starless sky, cursing and damning every single god he knows, and every single god he doesn't know.

They force milk of the poppy down his throat.

;

The next time he wakes, he devolves into hysterical laughter.

His mirth makes no sense; there is no irony in losing what he has lost.

They force milk of the poppy down his throat.

;

The final time he wakes, he doesn't fight.

There is no use fighting it. Death is death and that is that.

They don't force milk of the poppy down his throat.

;

He doesn't know how long he has been like this. Hours, days, weeks, months, years, he does not know.

He does not care.

;

They inform him that they have been waiting for him, waiting for him to get better, waiting for him to get out of his stupor, waiting for him to be ready, so they can hold a funeral feast.

You are important, their eyes seem to say.

You _were _important to _her_, their eyes seem to not want to say.

He thinks bitterly to himself that they ought to wait for all of my mankind to die out.

He shall never recover.

How could he, when he feels hollow and empty, as if the most vital part of him has been ripped out and shattered to a million and one pieces?

;

He should probably be ashamed; after all, it was exceedingly inappropriate of him to attend her funeral feast in a soiled shirt that stretches too tight across his arms and breeches that are fraying at the hem.

;

They had made a promise, a promise to never leave each other.

It was a promise he had made, and it was a promise he had intended to keep.

She had not kept her promise.

;

His hand trembles as he reaches for a skin of wine.

He swallows down the bile rising in his throat as he reaches for another, and another, and another.

Alcohol is the only consolation he has left.

It seemed all stags turned to alcohol afterwards to cope with their loss.

;

He spends the majority of the feast watching the guests, watching and peering and calculating their motives.

He gets angry when he finds none.

These people seem to genuinely be saddened by her death.

It makes him furious.

They do not know her, he thinks indignantly, not like I do.

They _did _not know her like he _did_, but he stubbornly refuses to start referring to her in the past tense.

;

He storms out, or struggles more like it, before the night is over, sick and tired and drained from the northerners that had come to pay their respects.

He is piss drunk, and yet he still remembers.

All he wants to do is forget.

;

He staggers and falls to the ground with a thud, pain stabbing up his leg.

He stays in the dirt.

;

He can still hear the noise coming from the great hall, the sobs, and the laments, and the songs.

He hears it over the hammering of his head and his raspy breathing.

He wants to sob, but he fears he has no tears left in his body.

The songs get louder and louder and his headache worsens to an unbearable degree.

;

He hears crunching near his head, watches scuffed boots reach him, observes long legs cross as they sit next to him.

He tilts his head up, gaze travelling up a skinny frame wrapped in a robe with a cowl of black on the right side, and a cowl of white on the left side.

He closes his eyes before he glances up even further. Shuts them tightly until the darkness disappears and he can see flashes of light behind his lids.

When he opens them, he's staring straight at her, straight at the wild, tangled, braided, brown hair running down her back, straight at the long, thin lines bracketing her face and mouth, straight at the chapped, puckered, cherry-colored lips, straight at the grey eyes staring back at him.

Her mouth twists into a small smile then, but her eyes reflect the grief and pain found in his blue eyes.

;

Hate surges through him; pure, unadulterated hatred. Hatred at the fact that she is here, whereas _she_ is not.

;

He fucks her against the cold, hard ground right then and there with the somber songs still echoing in the wind.

He is angry, furious, raging, and so he fucks her.

Her robe is ripped across the front; his breeches unlaced and his cock tugged out.

Her fingers dig into the soil; his hands rest above her head; their knuckles white against the blackness.

Her braid comes undone and her dark locks spread out across the ground; a curl has left the unruly mass atop his head and found its way in front of his eyes.

They avert their gazes; refuse to look into each other's eyes.

There is no meaning in their actions, and there never will be.

They fuck to forget, and it is as simple as that.

;

She leaves as soon as they are done.

He still remembers.

;

It becomes a game between them.

A game he is good at playing.

She sneaks into his chamber behind the forge when the castle is quiet and everyone has gone to bed, fucking him whenever the hell she pleases with a cruel smirk on her face and fingers biting into his back.

He gives back as good as he gets, but he always makes sure to avoid her grey eyes.

He will fuck her, but he will not look at her.

That is their one unspoken rule regarding their game.

;

She always leaves as soon as they are done.

He still remembers.

;

One night he takes his hammer and walks straight towards the nearest heart tree.

By the time the first rays of the sun are piercing through the braches, the carved face is unrecognizable and angry cuts mark his skin.

;

The first time she speaks to him, he is lying on his stomach, in his cot, sweaty and drained and pretending to sleep.

But she knows, she sees.

'It was a gift; the Many Faced God demanded it. Her death was slotted and set from the moment she took her very first breath.'

He drops the pretense then, and spits out, 'fuck your god.'

;

He wasn't stupid.

Her story was of one who was born to die.

;

In his dreams, he saves her, over and over and over again. But never in the way that matters.

When he wakes, his heart is still beating and his cot is empty.

He had never been able to save her.

He had failed her time and time again, and barring some miracle, the moment when she had died in his arms as he had begged her not to leave him would not be rewritten.

;

A fishmonger comes up to him, grabs his hand, a wobbly and sad smile on his lips, and tells him he's deeply sorry.

He resists the urge to punch the man in the face.

;

'Do you miss her?' he asks her up front, with his jaw set and his eyes averted, his vulnerability showing clearly through his voice.

'We were the only girls there.' Her fingers bring his eyes up towards hers, and try as he might, he cannot avoid her grey eyes and her cruel smirk. 'She was my sister, and I hers.'

Her voice is laced with a heavy accent, and he tries not to upchuck the wine he drunk earlier.

;

He finds Rickon smashing his wooden sword into a tree, sobs racking his whole body, angry tears running down his face.

He goes to stand in front of him, telling him to take his anger out on him.

Rickon refuses, no matter how many times he demands him to beat him mercilessly.

;

Bran's eyes are too knowing, too insightful, too understanding, just like hers had been. He looks like the weight of the world is upon his shoulders, but that is just how she had looked as well.

He spits in his face.

;

'I'm a bastard who lost his love,' he mumbles into his wine.

'And I'm a bastard who lost his sister, your one true _love_.' Jon snorts as he drains his own skin. 'We all have crosses to bear.'

;

This isn't how it is supposed to be, he thinks as he downs his skin of wine, gags on the slightly warm Dornish wine, and shuts his eyes at the grey eyes staring back at him.

She was supposed to get old, supposed to visit all seven kingdoms, supposed to bear his children, supposed to get fat and waddle and blame him for all her pains.

They were supposed to get old together.

;

She sneaks up on him once, startles the living daylights out him, and laughs at his fright.

He gets angry then, no one is allowed to laugh at him but _her_, and his hands end up around her neck.

She indulges him for a few seconds, but the next thing he knows, he is on the ground with an ugly bump on his head and she is gone.

;

Nymeria growls at him every time she sees him with her.

;

An ugly, fat man with a scarred face and a nose shaped like a raven's presses a knife against his side.

He smashes his face in with his hammer.

;

When she comes to him that night, he spreads her across his anvil, steps between her white thighs, and thrusts into her while splattered with blood and brains.

He takes a nipple into his mouth.

It does not taste right.

;

He puts his mouth on her cunt, thumbs her folds and tries to get as deep as possible, licking and biting and sucking till she tightens around his tongue, her breath hitching and stopping.

It does not sound right.

;

He bends her over the edge of his cot, wraps an arm around her hips bringing her as close as possible to him, his hand tugging and pulling on her hair, resting his head in the crook of her sweaty neck.

It does not smell right.

;

He drives his hips further and further into her every time she moans and gasps, fucking her hard until she tightens around him and her mouth opens in a silent scream.

It does not look right.

;

She collapses beneath him, her body sensitive and drained.

She looks up at him then, her cold, expressionless, grey eyes boring into him.

They are not _her _eyes.

It does not feel right.

;

'I could kill you,' she snarls, her lips curled around teeth.

'I want to kill you,' he replies as he punches the wall of his forge, bruising his knuckles in the process.

;

After a while, he becomes a baseborn bastard blacksmith once more.

He had always been a baseborn bastard blacksmith, but there was a time when he was her baseborn bastard blacksmith.

But he always knew the history books would forget about them, and the songs would not mention them.

;

She holds out a glass cup in front of him, a glass cup filled to the brim with clear liquid.

He pauses his hammering, inhales and exhales, then inhales again.

It feels so easy reaching out for the glass; his fingers already curled to receive it, his hand sure and for once, steady.

But then he almost feels a punch landing on his forearm, a touch so familiar and so real, and his arm is swinging and smashing the glass against the wall.

He had made a promise, and it was a promise he intended to keep.

'GET OUT,' he roars.

;

'Who are you?' he whispers, his voice rough and hoarse.

She peers at him over all the bottles laid out in front of her, eyebrows drawn over grey eyes.

'No one,' she answers.

;

'You fell in love with the Princess of Winterfell, surely you expected heartbreak.'

He's not quite surprised when his hands are around her neck again.

;

She had been as hard as steel, hard and unwillingly to break, or worse, soften.

But as he stares at the woman sitting in front of him, darkness covering half her face, he realizes he had been so completely and utterly wrong.

She had been as hard as steel, but she had also been soft and kind and loving and _real._

;

'Who are you?' he asks.

'No one,' she answers.

;

'Who are you?' he asks.

'No one,' she answers.

;

'Who are you?' he asks.

'No one,' she answers.

;

'Will you show me?' he asks.

She passes a hand over her face.

;

He finds her next to the clear pool in the godswood once, pulling out some herbs from the ground, and rage takes over his whole body, and before he even realizes it, he's storming up to her, roughly grabbing her arm, and shouting obscenities in her face.

'This is _our _place,' he rages 'Not yours, you do not belong here. You will never belong here. Get the fuck out.'

It gives him great pleasure to see the fear in her grey eyes.

;

She comes to him that night, resignation and finality present in her movements.

They do not have to say it, but he knows this is the last time he will ever see her.

This time when he fucks her, he looks straight at her, like he did when she crouched down next to him during that awful feast. Straight at the wild, tangled, braided, brown hair running down her back, straight at the long, thin lines bracketing her face and mouth, straight at the chapped, puckered, cherry-colored lips, straight at the grey eyes staring back at him.

He drinks every last bit of her in.

And then he spills, and she gets up and leaves.

;

He steals down to the crypts a fortnight later, holding a torch in one hand, and feeling the walls with the others.

The place is dark and cold and lonely and his mouth twists into a frown at the thought of her laying here for the rest of eternity.

He wants to turn back around and go to his forge, a familiar place, a place that did not set his heart on fire, but he can't.

The time for running is over.

He clenches his jaw, determination and stubbornness present in the jut of his bone and his pinched eyebrows, and continues walking down the gloomy crypt.

He has heard the stories about this place, but he had never expected to be here.

His torch casts dancing shadows across the floors and walls, and he's not surprised when it casts a shadow over the person kneeling in front of her stone statue.

He knew she'd be here.

She evidently didn't, as her slight jump and the hand pressed against her chest tells him. But she doesn't say frightened for long, her eyes calming and running down his face as he settles down next to her.

'About time you came,' her voice is soft and sweet, but laced with poison, and at that instant he realizes that she knows, that she has known all along.

'I-,' he gulps in a huge breath of air, sucking it in like he has been suffocating for years. 'I just want her back.'

'The dead must stay dead Gendry, you ought to know this by now,' she whispers. He looks at her properly then, looks at the person he has been avoiding for moons now because she had reminded him so much of _her_, not in looks, no, but in character, at the core. Her auburn locks are limp against her shoulders, the lines bracketing her eyes seem to have deepened, and she may look as put together as a queen ought to be, but her blue eyes convey all the pain he has been feeling for so long.

He's never felt more exhausted of living than he does at that moment.

'Wearing someone's face does not make one the person itself,' her voice trembles when she speaks, and she wipes her tears off with an angry swipe of her sleeve.

'I know that,' he hadn't intended to yell at her.

'Then what are you doing with her? She, whoever she is, is not her! That is just a mirage a bunch of stupid old men praying to the wrong god have created. That is not Arya, that will never be Arya. They can take her face, but they can never take her,' her voice gets progressively louder as screams in his face, all pretense of calmness gone.

'And what of your gods, your grace?' he spits back, his anger palpable in the air surrounding them. 'Your prayers did not protect her; your prayers _could_ not protect her. They may not have taken her, but their god did. Surely you know by now that there is one god, and he takes whomever he likes, whenever he likes.'

He can hear Sansa's sobs, no matter how hard she tries to silence them. And it pains him to realize he is not helping her with her grief, as a matter of fact, he is making everything so much worse.

If she were here right now, she would punch him in the gut for making her sister cry, punch him so hard that he would double over and cough up blood, and she would look him straight in the eyes and clearly inform him that she may love him, but she would feed his cock to Nymeria if he ever hurt her precious sister again.

'She's gone. It will never happen again,' he says, in an effort to ease her sobs.

'Good.'

He turns to her after a while then, grasps her hand, and whispers, 'I am sorry.'

He doesn't what he is apologizing for, maybe he's apologizing for letting that woman wear her face without complaint from him, maybe he's apologizing for taking so long to come down to the crypts, or maybe he's apologizing for bringing Arya back across the Narrow Sea and to her death.

He likes to think he is apologizing for everything.

She squeezes his hand then and gives him a watery smile, 'I do not know why the gods do things the way they do. But remember this Gendry, there were a million paths your life could have taken, a million paths her life could have taken, yet somehow both of you ended up travelling with Yoren that awful day. I know Arya, and I know she would re-do every single thing, every single horrible thing, with a fierceness and stubbornness that only she knows how to wield, knowing that she shall die in the great hall with a sword running through her, simply because she loved you. _Only _because she loved you.'

He laughs then, thinking to himself that he always loved her, and he always will.

He's gotten it all wrong.

He makes a new a promise then, a promise to never forget her, a promise to always remember.

It is a promise he has made, and it is a promise he will keep.

;

**A/N: Hello hello! I really hope I didn't muck this whole thing up. And I really hope everyone understands what the hell I was trying to ~do~. Anyways, I am still a review whore so pretty please? With a cherry on top?**


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